Hotel Florida (Vaill) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Magical and meticulous... [Hotel Florida] is a masterful reconstruction of one of the most tumultuous conflicts in 20th Century Europe.
Jane Ciabattari - BBC.com


[An] energetic group biography.... [Vaill] is a diligent researcher and a spirited writer who confidently inhabits and channels her historical characters. Her set pieces are numerous and well turned.
Charles Trueheart - American Scholar


During Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.... Vaill vividly recounts specific scenes of dying Spanish soldiers and citizens captured photographically by the journalists as well as deftly describing how Gellhorn insinuated herself into Hemingway’s marriage.... Beautifully told, Vaill’s story captures the timeless immediacy of warfront reporting with the universal struggle to stay in love, just before the Nazis permanently changed the European landscape. 16p. b&w illus
Publishers Weekly


The tragic Spanish Civil War (1936–39) began as a rebellion of the military against the elected government and became a rehearsal for world war.... In the midst of this, left-leaning journalists and photographers flocked to besieged Madrid's Hotel Florida to report on the Loyalist fight against Fascism..... The kind of history that readers will say "reads like a novel."  —Stewart Desmond, New York
Library Journal


Vaill follows a handful of characters...through the Spanish Civil War.... Although it will be difficult for readers to turn their eyes away from the power couple (Hemingway and Gellhorn), Vaill does a good job of getting us deeply interested in the lives...of the others.... War, sex, friendship, betrayal, celebrity, rivalry, jealousy, idealism, foolishness and foppery—all this and more gather in the lobby of Madrid's Hotel Florida.
Kirkus Reviews